So sure are the effects of iodine, in a curative way, in certain diseased conditions among domestic animals, that it has value in this regard from a diagnostic standpoint. Given a case apparently of this type for handling, the practitioner can be assured that he has erred in his diagnosis if iodine, in proper preparation and correct application, does not effect a cure. To illustrate this, I need only refer to that diseased condition of the skin commonly termed “ring worm.”
It is nothing unusual, in a veterinary practice, to see the curative effects of iodine applications demonstrated in certain chronic conditions, of the articulations for instance, after various other means of handling, even including surgical interference, had failed to effect the desired result. In not a few of such conditions, iodine applications, in some form, are prescribed as a sort of “last resort” treatment, even against the hopes of either client or practitioner, for the accomplishment of anything in the way of benefit.
Almost any practitioner of veterinary medicine, with whom you may care to discuss the matter, can point to case after case, in his own practice, in which a spavin, or a ring-bone, that had been cauterized or otherwise operated upon with failure, had yielded to a course of topical iodine applications. In some instances, a cure of this sort causes a practitioner to lose faith in operative measures for the correction of the conditions in question. Usually, however, it impresses upon him, with added force, the thought that he has not fully acquired the knack—either along practical or scientific lines—to select his cases properly. Could he be sure that a given case would yield to applications of iodine preparations, he would much prefer to treat it that way; but he is not often sure. He has learned that there are certain cases, although to all appearances, as far as he is able to tell, not differing from other cases of the same nature, will yield to actual cautery; he has learned, also, that certain cases will yield to local applications of certain iodine preparations. But he finds it difficult to select these cases for the respective forms of treatment in the general run of his practice. That he may be better able to serve his clients, and that he may even more highly appreciate the therapeutic worth of iodine in some of its forms of preparation, I have made some clinical observations, in my own practice, which I shall record in the following chapters, and which, I believe, will help to solve this problem for him. While it is not possible to pick out every case in which iodine applications will give the desired result, it is not an exceptionally difficult matter to select the great majority. It is the opinion of most veterinary practitioners, who have the ethics of their profession at heart, that the treatment of certain well-known pathological conditions of the articulations, by means of the actual cautery, is one of the most disagreeable features of a veterinary practice. It is one of the things that most veterinary practitioners are trying to get away from; it smacks more of quackery and dark-aged farriery than anything else that the veterinarian is obliged to do. When, on top of this, we view this form of treatment from the angle of the humanitarian, we fail to understand why otherwise able and enlightened practitioners will resort to it under any conditions. True, there are apparently a few forms—a very few—of equine lameness that will yield to no other form of treatment. Note, I have said apparently there are some. I believe, in fact, that any case of lameness located in an articulation is curable, if it is curable at all, by means other than burning the area with a red-hot iron. While most of us, in practice, do fire cases of articulation lameness, I believe that we do so for the reason that frequently it is for us the easiest way to terminate the conditions connected with the case. And I further believe that every time we resort to the actual cautery, for the correction of a lameness in an articulation, we admit, in the fact that we do so resort, that we do not fully understand the condition we are attempting to cure. This belief is the result of actual contact with ample clinical material and the observations made in actual practice covering a period of time extending over more than fifteen years.
Other chronic pathological conditions, in which iodine applications are frequently serviceable, are various new-growths in the integument, underlying tissues, and in the glandular tissue near the body surface. It is often possible to accomplish, with topical iodine applications, results in these conditions which could only be equalled by surgical interference of much more costly and dangerous character. Iodine applications are at times resorted to in such conditions as these, to obviate the scar formation that might result from a surgical operation. At other times, resort is had to iodine on account of such objections to surgical interference as cost, danger to the patient’s life, protracted period of convalescence, or other equally reasonable objections.
In the effects that are obtained from the local applications of iodine preparations, in chronic pathological conditions, these preparations act not only in a palliative or ameliorative sense, but literally in a curative manner. They accomplish, in these conditions, solely and wholly through their own activity, the removal of the condition and the correction of the respective abnormalities. While, in some of the conditions under discussion, the desired result is attained only after very prolonged treatment with iodine, the condition is usually of such a character that neither the owner of the animal nor the attending veterinarian is averse to lending the time consumed. In other of these conditions, the desired result comes very promptly, at times with a rapidity that causes astonishment. In all cases yielding to topical iodine therapy, sufficient evidence of the beneficial effect derived is discernible with sufficient promptness to encourage the continuance of the treatment.
IV.
The Selection of Iodine Preparations for Practical Use.
Next in importance to the proper selection of cases amenable to topical iodine application, is the selection of the particular preparation of iodine to be applied. As I have already pointed out, in the chapter on the general consideration of local iodine therapy, what may be an indication for the use of iodine in one form may lack the requisite pathological status for its successful application in another.
While the effect that the various preparations produce probably does not vary to a great extent, the ability to exert this effect does vary in the different preparations. Because of certain physical properties with which the vehicle carrying the iodine is endowed, certain preparations of iodine are more active in a given condition than others. Others, again, hold the iodine in such a manner that it is more readily available for the needs of the case under treatment, while yet another preparation may hold, within its pharmaceutical dress, greater quantities of available iodine than one very closely allied to it in every other regard.
Then, too, it is not always the particular form or preparation that influences the effect; frequently this influence is, for the most part, in the pathological condition itself. Without going into the details of what must be especially considered in the selection of the preparation to be used in a given pathological condition, I have here set down the observations that I have made, in my own practice, and which my experience with this branch of veterinary practice has indicated to me as being as nearly correct as could be expected in a practical way.